Mac client syncs only contacts, assigned to latest address book

[PaddyPat]

i've created an "archive" address book in Contacts (Web Gui), add a contact to this "archive" addressbook.

iOS: I see all Address Books in Contacts app (all contacts also)
MacOS (latest) all contacts from default address book are not displayed, I see only the one contact from the latest created (archive) address book
Windows: Syncs only contacts from "contacts" address book

tryed to sync directly the "contact" addressbook via direct link to /user/contacts/ (macos) but it doesn't accept (account is not available)

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[irgendwie]

So basically you say, that MacOS and Windows have problems while syncing the contacts? What Software are you using on Windows? Or does it provide a native client for that? Same question for MacOS.

Is anyone able to reproduce this? Not sure with the current state of information if this is a problem in the client applications you are using, the CardDAV backend in nextcloud/server or our application.

[PaddyPat]

Only Mac client has issues
Mac contacts app syncs all contacts from Nextcloud till I create a second "archive" address book and add one contact card to this new address book.

Windows syncs only Contacts from default "contact" and not from "archive" but this is ok

[PaddyPat]

hm could you pls check it?

[Henni]

tryed to sync directly the "contact" addressbook via direct link to /user/contacts/ (macos) but it doesn't accept (account is not available)

could you elaborate on this error?
The complete 'direct link' and also a screenshot of the error might help.

It is also unclear to me what you mean by 'second "archive"'. Our app doesn't allow addressbooks with the same name. Or was the addressbook created in another client?

Mac contacts app syncs all contacts from Nextcloud till I create a second "archive" address book and add one contact card to this new address book.

Overall the issue seems to lie somewhere else, as there is at least one client (iOS) which seems to be fine with the contacts created in Nextcloud.

[PaddyPat]

Here, I mean I create a second address book (archive)

and add one contact to this group

the issue is, that after this new change, all contacts (which are before in the macos Contacts App) were removed and only the one contact from "contacts_archive" is visible in macOS "Contact" App

this issue is only with macOS Contacts app. The contacts are not deleted from nextcloud! I see them on my iPhone and Android phone and at the nextcloud contact Website - all contacts are visible

.(why the second address book? I'm not deleting old contacts - I move them to contacts_archive)

[irgendwie]

Can someone with a Mac reproduce this issue given the instructions in this issue?
I'm not sure, why this happens. @PaddyPat What happens if you try to reconfigure your Mac client (such that all address books are read in again)?

[irgendwie]

@PaddyPat I found a thread in the ownCloud forums, which deals with syncing problems on Mac OS. Maybe you are able to find a workaround/configuration over there! (https://central.owncloud.org/t/owncloud-9-1-1-1-2-macos-sierra-carddav-not-working-solved/3481)
It would be helpful if you can share the solution, if you find one. Otherwise there isn't much we can do on our side in the moment.

[snowbolzer]

Have the same issue with macOS Sierra and nextcloud 12.0.4 . Don´t know if the Problem existet in former Versions. Just createt 2 new Adressbooks yesterday.

Screenshot from NC

Screenshot from IOS 11.2.2 Contacts

Screenshot MacOS Sierra Contacts

Found no way to display all Adressbooks in MacOS. Only The "Kontakte" Adressbook and its contacts are shown.

[snowbolzer]

same Problem with my MacBook running OSX Lion

[snowbolzer]

‭i use this carddav link:

https://mydomain/remote.php/dav/principals/users/USER/

[abuzze]

I have seen the same problem with the contacts app (Version 10.0 (1756.20) on Sierra. I added some contacts to the default contacts address book and synced them to my Mac and my iPhone. Then i created a new address book called Archive in the webgui and moved some contacts to the new address book. After a while only those contacts where shown on the Mac, although all contacts where still visible on the iPhone and in the Web GUI.
I deleted the address book in the Web GUI and after that, the normal address book was synced to the Mac.
I saw no error messages in the nextcloud.log with debug turned on.

During testing with new address books i found that this behavior is not always triggered. For example if i name the address book shared or testbook, everything is fine. Only if i name it Archive, this problem occurs for me.

[bowmasters]

@abuzze It appears that contacts on Sierra only syncs the first address book it finds based on alphabetical order (of the address book uri), which is why you only saw the issue when you changed the name of the new address book to "Archive"

one thing you can do is create a new address book prefixed with an underscore (e.g. '_Contacts') and use this as your new default calendar. This way it will appear alphabetically before any other address books.

You can always change the display name to something else without the underscore after it is created and the uri will remain as '_Contacts' and thus still be the first when synced on Sierra

[skjnldsv]

Unfortunately this is not a bug related to contacts.
There are some other inputs on the forum here: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/high-sierra-address-book-does-not-sync/23007/17

I'll close this one.

[waja]

Unfortunately this is not a bug related to contacts.
There are some other inputs on the forum here: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/high-sierra-address-book-does-not-sync/23007/17

Which does not solve the issue. Egroupware, the software I used before, had not those struggles in combination with macOS.

[skjnldsv]

@waja The contacts app is just a vcard editor linked to nextcloud.
Any connectivity and/or synchronisation issues are not related to this app unfortunately.
There is indeed a bug known for the built-in mac sync, but of course other independent software may (or not) work properly.

[nursoda]

This bug now hit me too, very frustrating: To use features like sharing contacts with different groups you have to use several address books. TB/Lightning and DAVdroid work fine but one cannot use OS native apps like MacOS contacts/calendar properly with NC.

I urge you to reopen this bug since there IS a hint how it IS solvable in NC: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/high-sierra-address-book-does-not-sync/23007/19

This probably is not the FAULT of NC, but with an increasing Apple device NC user base please consider implementing a workaround. I do not know how to properly debug the protocol but I volunteer to coordinate the bug report against Apple if that is of any help and if some dev provides me with the technical detail that proves MacOS's fail along with a proposed change (that won't break their systems).

For the time being there is another workaround: Create dummy users that get additional address books shared and add those users to macOS contacts as suggested by Bernie_O in https://help.nextcloud.com/t/discussion-adressbooks-sync-with-macos/25760/10

[skjnldsv]

@nursoda so if I get this right:

1. you can fix this by commenting out the link from the error pages to the appropriates 403 & 404.php?
2. Or you can fix this by having each addressbook shared to you by another user?

If so all addressbooks appear in macOS? Sorry, we'll have to be very precise here, because that mean we can fix things on nextcloud then! :)
Thanks!

[nursoda]

I did not try to modify my error pages since that would mean that I need to alter my production environment (which is still on NC 13 anyway). So I was just citing what I found. That forum user did solve it in NGINX, I use Apache. But it sounds as if NC sends error pages in cases where macOS app requests something different. And since Egroupware solved it, it might be worth asking them or looking into their code (which is out of my abilities).

I DID however do the workaround with the dummy users for each address book that was unsynced and that seems to for fine for now.

[waja]

you can fix this by commenting out the link from the error pages to the appropriates 403 & 404.php?

in recent NC configs for nginx those error_page statements are not existing anymore. Those are also not in mine.

[skjnldsv]

Thanks both of you!
So the sharing trick is sufficient for macOS. I will work on this and try to see what we can do!

[wolframroesler]

Had the same problem with Mojave. Fixed it like this, as suggested in https://help.nextcloud.com/t/high-sierra-address-book-does-not-sync/23007/19:

$ sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/nextcloud

Commented out the following lines:

error_page 403 /core/templates/403.php;
error_page 404 /core/templates/404.php;

Changed fastcgi_intercept_errors from on to off.

Then:

$ sudo service nginx restart

After this, contacts sync smoothly between macOS, iOS, and the Nextcloud browser app.

Some version numbers for the record:

• Nextcloud Server 14.0.3 running on Lubuntu 16.04
• nginx 1.10.3
• macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave)
• iOS 12.1.2

[BernieO]

@skjnldsv: Unfortunately this fix doesn't work for me. There is still only one addressbook synched to MacOS X. iOS works fine with more than one addressbook.

I don't see why changing this directive should make any difference. The from nginx delivered error code stays the same whether fastcgi_intercept_errors is on or off:
http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_fastcgi_module.html#fastcgi_intercept_errors

From reading the according thread in the forum, the proposed solution is for another issue: synching stops after some contacts were synched. The title of this issue is about synching more than one addressbooks to Mac OS X.

@wolframroesler: could you please write precicely whether you can sync more than one addressbook (edit: from a single account!) with Mac OS X??

A while ago, I did some tests and also creating a new addressbook with an addressbook name "earlier in the alphabetical order" like suggested here #399 (comment) did work reliably on Mac OS X. The problem though is if you use the same account on iOS and Mac OS, that in iOS the alphabetical order doesn't make any difference and you can't choose which addressbook is the default addressbook (where new created contacts are saved). So they might show up then in the one addressbook Mac OS is able to deal with or not.

This is the nginx access log (nothing is written to the error log) when adding an account containing three different addressbooks to iOS and Mac OS X (no error_page directive and fastcgi_intercept_errors off in nginx configuration):

# iOS 12.1.4
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:12 +0100] "PROPFIND /.well-known/carddav HTTP/1.1" 301 178 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) accountsd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:12 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) accountsd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:13 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav HTTP/1.1" 207 476 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) accountsd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:14 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) accountsd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:17 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:20 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:25 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 1579 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:26 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:27 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 6928 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:30 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/neuesRom/ HTTP/1.1" 207 518 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:31 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/neuesRom/ HTTP/1.1" 207 677 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:32 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/neuesRom/ HTTP/1.1" 207 726 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:33 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/Familie_shared_by_Caesar/ HTTP/1.1" 207 536 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:35 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:35 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/Familie_shared_by_Caesar/ HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:37 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/Familie_shared_by_Caesar/ HTTP/1.1" 207 709 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:37 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/Familie_shared_by_Caesar/ HTTP/1.1" 207 731 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:38 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/default/ HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:39 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/default/ HTTP/1.1" 207 517 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:45:40 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:41 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:42 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/default/ HTTP/1.1" 207 675 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:43 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/default/ HTTP/1.1" 207 725 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:44 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:50 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 1579 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:50 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 6928 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:54 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/neuesRom/ HTTP/1.1" 207 284 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:55 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/Familie_shared_by_Caesar/ HTTP/1.1" 207 285 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"
1.2.3.4 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:45:56 +0100] "REPORT /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/default/ HTTP/1.1" 207 284 "-" "iOS/12.1.4 (16D57) dataaccessd/1.0"


# Mac OS X 10.14.3
1.2.3.5 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:47:50 +0100] "PROPFIND /.well-known/carddav HTTP/1.1" 301 178 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:47:50 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav HTTP/1.1" 401 569 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:52 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav HTTP/1.1" 207 476 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:53 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:54 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 1579 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:55 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 6928 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - - [03/Mar/2019:06:47:56 +0100] "PROPFIND /.well-known/carddav HTTP/1.1" 301 178 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:57 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav HTTP/1.1" 207 476 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:58 +0100] "OPTIONS /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 200 0 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:47:59 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/principals/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 1579 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"
1.2.3.5 - Brutus [03/Mar/2019:06:48:00 +0100] "PROPFIND /remote.php/dav/addressbooks/users/Brutus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 6928 "-" "Mac OS X/10.14.3 (18D109) AddressBookCore/1"

As you can see, iOS finds all three addressbooks (neuesRom, Familie_shared_by_Caesar, default) while Mac OS seems to just not look for any addressbook and only syncs the one named default, which is the first one in alphabetical order.

[waja]

@skjnldsv: Unfortunately this fix doesn't work for me. There is still only one addressbook synched to MacOS X. iOS works fine with more than one addressbook.

Everything what @BernieO has written here counts also for me, I just was so lame to report it back. With this change as done with hoellen/dockerfiles#20 does not change anything when using more than one address book for one user. That's really annoying as sharing contacts with other also does not work since this is done by a separate address book (as far I can remember).

[skjnldsv]

@BernieO I have really no ideas!
I don't own a mac and I have no way of testing it. I'm relying on other contributors and since a fix seemed to have been found, it looked promising 🤷‍♀️

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7372295

[BernieO]

@skjnldsv I see and understand - no problem.
I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for the time you are investing in the contacts-app which works great (much better than Mac OS X addressbook 😉)

I investigated a bit further:

The link you posted is irrelevant for this issue, but it made me look around and I found this where some interesting links regarding this issue are collected:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6612054
Further down on that site there is a link to ownCloud forums with a hack (manipulating the remote.php), which is not a true solution. Apart from being a security nightmare and Nextcloud complaining about the file integrity check, a better solution would be to have the second addressbooks under another user account in Nextcloud and let Mac OS X subscribe to that user as well.

The apple discussion led me to sabre.io: http://sabre.io/dav/clients/osx-addressbook/
There in section „single addressbook“ it is stated that Mac OS X addressbook is unable to deal with multiple addressbooks until Mac OS X 10.10. I am using Mac OS X 10.14 and I think this is still the case, but the sabre-Website has not been updated.

Egroupware which has been used by @waja merges multiple addressbooks of one user into a single one if it detects Mac OS X as client, which explains why @waja claims that Mac OS X supports multiple addressbooks, though it doesn‘t. The according comment from egroupware can be found here:
https://github.com/EGroupware/egroupware/blob/17.1/addressbook/inc/class.addressbook_groupdav.inc.php#L93-L98

Conclusion: Mac OS X does not support multiple addressbooks from a single user. This issue is not an issue of Nextcloud or the nextcloud contacts app, but from Mac OS X.

[wolframroesler]

@wolframroesler: could you please write precicely whether you can sync more than one addressbook (edit: from a single account!) with Mac OS X??

I've tested it with a single address book only.

[PascalTurbo]

Are there any news about this issue?

[Ekspatty]

Are there any news about this issue?

Sorry, PascalTurbo. Nothing new will happen here - please see the very good conclusion from BernieO, March 3rd 2019. This is NOT a NextCloud or NextCloud Contacts app issue, it's a MacOS issue and needs to be solved there.
(This probably does not have very high priority at Apple as they want you to use the iCloud service rather than your own.)

[fr43nk]

Hi,
this is really frustrating. Since iOS supports multiple addressbooks it is clear to me that it is a macOS issue.
But what I want to emphasis is the idea which was mentioned (#399 (comment)) by the Egroupware: merge all addressbooks into a single virtual one if the client is the macos contacts app.

Do you think this would be a feasible solution?

Best,
Frank

[skjnldsv]

Do you think this would be a feasible solution?

No, that might lead to a crazy amount of issues. Conflicts and all. Contacts are unique within their addressbook. Merging them all could lead to duplicate unique IDs and break other apps.

[JMoVS]

I just filed a feedback with apple (feedback assistant on MacOS - feel free to dupe it FB9836060)

[bit15]

Oh great, after searching, if my nextcloud installation with nextcloudpi (on ssd drive, not on sd-card, which avoids many I/O-errors coming after about 0.5-1 years if server runs 24/7 ... had a bad experience with this on a raspberry pi 2, which boots only from sd-cards, but my nextcloud on raspberry pi 4 8GB runs since about 1.5 years without any problems and I never needed the regularly made backups) has bug with contacts.

I thought it is a bug in nextcloud because iOS/iPadOS has now problem with several contact lists per user/account. But now this site tells me that macOS 13.5 (old numbering MacOS X 10.13.5) has this problem yet. This is really sad as macOS has no problem with several calendars per user/account.

Please tell me if I can help or at least how I can beg Apple that they implement the several contact lists per user/account. I think, as more user beg for this of Apple, the more likely it will be Apple implements this feature finally.

Thank you all!
(At least I know now that this mistake is not because of me or nextcloud.)